Photographing the Big Sur coast can be daunting. There’s the pesky issue of it being so spectacular. Every turnout looks like a Sierra Club calendar photo. How do I make make something of my own from these environs? What I found out was, to not try very hard at any of it. I found that a sort of creative indirection was the best way to handle the gorgeous scenery.

It is not my first trip to the region. About a decade ago, I got myself a 4×5 camera. The intent was to do a “beginner’s mind” thing with my photography, start over with an unfamiliar technology and see what kind of pictures I would make if I had to compose them upside down and under a dark cloth. I was very intent on what I was doing. I had a plan and a purpose. In the end, I made the expected sort of photographs you get when you trundle around the central California coast with a 4×5. After about three years I figured out that large format was not advancing my photography anywhere I wanted it to go, and I went back to smaller formats.

Another trip I did with stock photography in mind. Those spectacular pullouts on Highway One were the point, as were the forests and the towns and the tourist destinations. I had a plan, and a place for the photographs.

This time, I had no plan. I responded to the whim of my inner compass as Robin and I drove from LA to SF. In southern California I wandered slowly through the brushy canyons, when I wasn’t making photos inside of art museums. Morro Bay was about empty water and sky. At Pfeiffer Beach, I turned my back on the surf and rocks and headed for the blown down mess of cypress trees behind the dunes. It was hard, unrelenting sunlight, the worst sort of conditions for this kind of environment. I messed around without expecting too much from it. At the state parks in Big Sur I birded along the rivers, casually shooting where I was, without a deep fixation on anything in particular. Sometimes I did become fixated; I had great fun on Weston Beach in Pt. Lobos, pretending I was channelling Edward Weston himself making poignant, pregnant abstractions. I even let myself photograph the spectacular views, on a tripod and with a polarizer filter. Hey, might as well do it right.

A great thing about an aimless trip of this sort is that the pressure’s off. Image making is still the compelling activity, but there is a deliberate purposelessness about the effort. It allows me to do that most important work of an artist—to fail a lot. I explored a lot of visual dead ends, I made abundant bad pictures, I responded to what was around me, but most of those responses missed the mark. I joke with my clients that I’m a good photographer because I’m a bad photographer a lot more often. It’s more true for most of us than we might like to admit. On a trip like this, I can afford to indulge these apparently fruitless explorations.

It is important work nonetheless. This is where what’s next happens. Sam Abell, a mentor of mine, puts it as “shooting ahead of ourselves.” The dominant theme in my work now started unrecognized while I was busy with something else. One of my dead ends might become an important part of my work henceforth. Or not. My job is to indulge the aimlessness whenever I have the opportunity. It’s like the basic rule of investing—make sure you have a diversified portfolio. I am adding to the savings account on a trip of this sort. The return will come sometime when I don’t expect it.

Yes, these places can be intimidating. The problem for me is compounded of three parts: the sheer overwhelming beauty, all the images I’ve seen of the place before, and all the images I know any viewers of my image will have seen before.

I wonder if it’s possible to get it somewhat out of your system by deliberately spending time trying to make images resembling as closely as possible those of, say, Morley Baer. It would be like artists who train by copying paintings in museums. It would force you to really get inside his work. And if you then failed to escape from the influence, you’d at least have some great photographs!

Your description of process is wonderful. I find it perfectly fits at least one of the ways that I joggle my head around. For me, too, photography is a no-brainer — I don’t imagine myself a good one, so I can muck about with great carelessness, and then use what I find on the disk in the other art. And I paint endless bad paintings — I’m profligate about materials and will fling watercolor and even oils when I know what I’m doing is embarrassing. I can’t get where I want to go unless I spend lots of time mucking about. I call these things “studies” but really they are at best “deliberate purposelessness.”

I think that an artist can climb over the obstacles of triteness, slither under them, confront them head-on by copying the great ones, or any number of other ways to jolt oneself out of one’s usual processes. The point here is to be able to perceive and articulate what works for you and to do it again when you need to.

Along with the putative studies, bad paintings, sloppy watercolors, and so forth, I have what I think of as my wipe-out mode. I get totally wiped out, exhausted, almost ill. I force myself to work and focus and do bad bad art and curse and stumble. Then I let it all go. I go to bed. I spend a couple of days mumbling and sleeping. And then, when I come to life again, I am sometimes in a state of some kind of illumination — I know things I didn’t know before. It’s like going to the bottom of the well and waiting for the water to seep back in. Or some such metaphor:-)

Doug,
I’m grateful for your exploration of process. While I’m passionate about photography, I’m mostly looking–in the the posts of people like you and Paul Butzi–for process thoughts that I can apply to my writing. Regarding this post in particular, I have found that I write best–and extend myself best–when I give myself active permission to write garbage. With the pressure off, I can explore freely and take risks that I wouldn’t otherwise. Expecting the work to suck offers huge freedoms.

Doug, I go to Big Sur for doses of aimlessness at least once or twice a year. I usually end up out on the deck at Nepenthe reading a book, eating their two-bean salad, and taking occasional photos of the crows.

I did a whole exhibit with crows — well, crows and dragons. They were alter egos — great for irreverence. They don’t take themselves, or us, seriously. Photographing them here in Portland is maddening because they manage to stay just out of a decent focal length. I can never figure out how they know how long my zoom is, but they waddle away or squawk in a tree, just beyond where I can get a good photograph.

Doug,
Big Sur always brings back that book ‘Zen and the art of..’ rushing back to me. I will need to haul myself and the family one of these days and take a slow road trip acorss the countries described…
The first image is great (you almost feel like paragliding into the image from my seat here). The second I am confused…

Wow, did we get of on a tangent here. Regarding Sunil’s comment–I meant that opening photograph as an ironic statement, as in, how can you not take a gorgeous photo here? Everyone else has. The ending shot, all confusion and darkness, is the harbinger of what I was able to open up in my meanderings without expectations.

I remember from my college years a book called, “Writing Without Teachers” which proposed the free-writing technique that Trevor talks about. It’s how I begin in writing and photography both when I haven’t a clue–I just do it until a clue emerges.

And what do crows have to do with any of this? I love crows–I have a pair of protector crows on my block (the block captains), that alert me to any hawk that tries to stake out my bird feeder. In late summer the adolescent crows blow themselves up on the transformers (they short them out) to great amusement and anguish, causing local power failures and advancing natural selection.

Crows? I was thrilled by David’s comment about his experience in Big Sur. I think it raises interesting questions related to your post: must art be (formally) Composed? Can our appreciation combine the experiences of Splendor and the Mundane?

What I liked so much about David’s experience (the photos remain unseen, boxed in Storage) is that I imagine the Natural World only as a backdrop (yet still in full force) to his shared experience of/for an appetizing meal with a Bird. He has come up from LA and it, the Crow, has come down from a tree. Their meeting has so many Shades of Gray.

D, this is turning into an interesting collaboration. Gives new meaning to the idea of Self Storage.

(PS – if we include an image of the Storage Facility, maybe we could make some money from product placement. Do you feel this would compromise the aesthetic purity of the experience? And if so, at what price would we be willing to accept that?)

Instead, maybe we should try the opposite and use technology to remove all advertisements (are you familiar with Paul Pfeiffer?) Or better yet after removing all advertisments (the competition), we then sell a single Product Placement to the highest bidder. We can even throw-in a photocopied collection from “Crows in Big Sur” suitable for framing and to be hung at corporate headquarters.